Author(s)

Dana Samuelsen

Date Approved

6-3-2015

Embargo Period

3-3-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A. School Psychology-Professional School Psychology

Department

Psychology

College

College of Science & Mathematics

Advisor

Dihoff, Roberta

Subject(s)

Preschool children; Literacy

Disciplines

Pre-Elementary, Early Childhood, Kindergarten Teacher Education | Student Counseling and Personnel Services

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the predetermined amount of attendance of preschool per week had an effect on the present understanding of early literacy skills in preschool aged children. Archival data, of forty-nine participants, was used to identify amount of attendance in a private early childhood education program. Early literacy skills were assessed by the child care center's previous academic reviews reported by teachers from 2010 to 2014. The "PreK Academic Review" was used to collect data on early literacy skills and oral language abilities. The teachers recorded the students' abilities by marking each category as "mastered", "progress shows", or "not mastered". These abilities were then matched up with the amount of predetermined attendance per week to search for any correlations. The results of this study showed significant differences for the average score of emergent literacy skills at .012, but did not reveal a significant difference (.142) for the average score of oral language. Post Hoc (Tukey's HSD) showed significant differences for full time and part time attendance (.009) on early literacy skills, but not for half time and part time attendance (.342). This shows that full-time attendance, when compared to half-time or part-time, improves emergent literacy skills.

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